8 years of development, 1 successful Kickstarter campaign, but in the end no 3 years of live operation … an ambitious SciFi-MMO will go offline forever in August 2025.
What game is it about? Dual Universe was released on Steam in September 2022 and had a long development time and 2 years of beta leading up to that. With their promise of a persistent MMO universe with enormous freedom, the developers managed to raise over 565,000 euros during the Kickstarter campaign in 2016.
The mix of Eve Online and Minecraft has been struggling with big economic issues from the very beginning. Moreover, despite the freedoms, there is not that much to do. Many issues from the early days are still present. Content updates have become rare, despite the subscription fee.
The result of all this: Dual Universe sits at Steam with only 51 percent positive feedback. Recently, only a handful of Steam users have been online in the universe at the same time (via steamdb.info).
What have the developers announced? In the official forum on dualthegame.com, the officials announced the end of the official server of Dual Universe. It states:
Today we announce the closure of the Dual Universe server. With a heavy heart, we must inform you that the Dual Universe MMO server will be shut down on Wednesday, August 27, 2025, at 14:00 UTC.
We cannot thank you all enough for supporting Dual Universe during this time. As the official Dual Universe MMO server approaches its grand finale, the journey of the Noveans will continue as they fly to the outer reaches of the universe in myDU.
MyDu stays, the costs for MyDu too
What does the last part of the quote mean? The paid, community-driven standalone version MyDu of Dual Universe is said to remain online according to the developers. There, player-hosted public servers can be found.
The developers are currently examining the possibility of making the game available to all interested parties as an open-source license OpenDU due to the “Stop Killing Games” movement. However, technical and legal aspects still need to be clarified.
What else is important? Anyone who still has DACs on their Dual Universe account should use them according to the developers by August 2025 – for access to MyDu, for example. Anyone switching to a MyDu server should also remember to export their blueprints.
Furthermore, the announcement states: “After August 27, 2025, the remaining unused paid subscription time will be refunded to your accounts. Please note that it may take 7 to 14 business days (sometimes longer) for a credit card company to process a refund (this is beyond our control). All current/active subscribers can play the MMO Dual Universe until August 27, 2025.”
The last announcement from the devs nicely reflects that Dual Universe had many issues: They are still working on sending the last physical Kickstarter rewards from the 2016 campaign (!) to the respective backers. The SciFi-MMO is not the only crowdfunding project from the past 13 years with problems: 24 Kickstarter MMOs that wanted money from you – a financial statement after 13 years with a frustrating balance
